Read an Exclusive Sword Fight Excerpt from Neal Stephenson’s The Mongoliad: Book Three

This image of Lakshaman — the sword-fighter in chapter 11 — appears in the hardcover and digital versions of The Mongoliad: Book Three Collector’s Edition. Illustration: Mike Grell

It’s been nearly a year since Neal Stephenson and friends released the first installment of their Foreworld series — and even longer since they first started releasing it as an “online social media experience” — and now the saga is complete. The Mongoliad: Book Three — the final installment of the series — comes out today, closing the latest chapter of the massive medieval adventure.

To give just a little taste of what’s in store, Wired is premiering all of chapter 11 here. (Don’t worry, no one goes bankrupt … well, maybe morally bankrupt, but not really. Nevermind.) The Mongoliad was birthed out of a genuine interest in swordfighting by Stephenson and his fellow authors Greg Bear, Mark Teppo, Nicole Galland, Erik Bear, Joseph Brassey, and Cooper Moo — all of whom sought to create a bloody alternate history of Western martial arts.

(Spoiler alert: Plot points to follow, naturally.)

Book Three begins with Ongwhe Khan’s Circus of Swords being reopened – causing fighters on both sides to join forces to attempt to bring the Khan down. Chapter 11 introduces Lakshaman, an Eastern gladiator (see the illustration above), who will be playing a key role in the ultimate conflict.

Read on to find out what happens when Lakshaman does battle in Khan’s Circus below.

Chapter 11: Rough Beasts

Lakshaman lived because other men bled. His world, the gilded prison of Onghwe Khan’s menagerie, had been reduced to this axiomatic definition. He could no longer recall a life before the Khan’s arena—not that such a life mattered to him any more, anyway. He had seen the light go out of a man’s eyes more than a hundred times, and each time, the cessation of the other’s breath and heartbeat simply validated the primal truth of Lakshaman’s existence.

Did he secretly yearn for something else? Some life that was not filled with the torpid stickiness of blood or the putrefying stench of fear? Did he look at his hands and wonder if they were meant to hold something other than his cruel knives? When he was led into the dark tunnel that led to the arena, did he gaze into the darkness and wonder if, perhaps, there was no end to this tunnel? Maybe it went on forever, and eventually, he would stop and look back and not be able to see where he came from. There would be no point in continuing, and so he would sit down in the darkness. Maybe he would even lie down and rest. If the fundamental truth of his existence was no longer valid, would he close his eyes and simply stop breathing?

The islander had asked him questions like those, recently. The one who called himself Mountain of Skulls. After Zug’s defeat in the Circus, he had become oddly reflective and was prone to fits of introspection like this. As much as Zug’s questions seemed to be the addled nonsense spewed by an idiot, Lakshaman had found himself unable to simply ignore them, and so he said they were silly questions. There was always an end to the tunnel, he told Zug, and at the end, there would be a man waiting to die.

The Khan’s stickmen surrounded him as he strode through the tunnel. They stank of fear, even though they were many and Lakshaman’s hands were bound. They walked stiffly, the tension in their arms and legs announcing their discomfort more loudly than a hungry baby’s wail. Lakshaman gave them as little thought as he had Zug’s philosophical questions. They were like the flies that swarmed horse shit.

He may even have said as much to the Flower Knight, Kim Alcheon, when the Korean had come to talk of rebellion. They are flies on shit, he may have said.

Does that make us the shit? Kim had enquired. He had been amused by Lakshaman’s words, and for a moment, Lakshaman had felt a twinge of something deep within his brain, an unfamiliar emotional response.

If you wish to think of yourself that way –certainly, he may have said to Kim, ignoring the man’s humorous query. The Korean had been spending too much time with Zug, and had picked up some of the Nipponese man’s annoying habits. They’re just flies. I can swat flies.

The gate at the end of the tunnel opened as it always did, and the channeled sound of the audience swept over him. Several of his Mongol guards hesitated, and Lakshaman found himself idly thinking about pulling the wings and legs off some flies as he stepped out of the dim tunnel. He blinked in the sunlight, and took a deep breath, inhaling the fecund aroma of the arena’s sand, the sweat of his guards, and the stink of the massed audience. The familiar smells.

Soon there would be the scent of blood too.

One of the guards stepped forward to undo the bindings on his hands, and Lakshaman stared unblinkingly at the top of the man’s head. The guard fumbled with the knots when he saw another of the guards placing Lakshaman’s knives in the dirt — just out of reach, but still too close for the man’s comfort. The Mongol nervously licked his lips and tugged hard on the last knot, trying not to be distracted by the presence of the knives.

Lakshaman didn’t move; he didn’t even blink. As soon as the final knot was loosened, he flexed the fingers of his right hand, and the Mongol guard fled.

The gate banged shut behind him, leaving Lakshaman alone in the arena, surrounded by the thunderous noise of the eager crowd. Slowly — Zug would have accused him of playing to the crowd slightly — Lakshaman stripped the loose bindings from his wrists and hands, tossing the rope aside. He flexed his hands, bending each of the joints of his fingers.

His knives waited for him. Unadorned, hilts wrapped with stained leather, blades marred with age and use, they were not fancy weapons. Lakshaman scooped them up, the hilts slapping comfortably against his palms, and finally turned his attention to his opponent.

The man was by now waiting for him in the center of the sandy arena, swathed in a coating of maille from neck to knees. A white coat covered his midsection, stained with dirt and stitched with a red sword beneath a Christian cross of the same color. The man’s helmet was an unadorned metal can that offered only a thin slit in the front. While it made the man’s face a difficult target, it also reduced his field of vision. He held a short hatchet in one hand, a horseman’s hammer in the other.

A frown crossed Lakshaman’s face. He was wearing mismatched leathers, a sleeved jerkin, and pants he had acquired from a dead man a long time ago. Though his blades were long, each roughly the same length as the span from his elbow to his fingertip, they were made for cutting. Against this man, they would not be very effective. Lakshaman glanced up at the colorful silk hangings of the Khan’s pavilion. He would not be able to see the Khan very well if at all — the sun was high overhead and most of the pavilion was clothed in shadow—but the Khan could see him.

He would kill this man — he could imagine no other outcome. But the Khan’s dismissal of his value was like an itch in a spot he could not easily reach. He was under-armed and underprotected to fight this man. Either the Khan was supremely confident of his ability, or Onghwe simply wanted a spectacle, a passing bloody fancy to occupy an otherwise indolent afternoon.

Like flies, he thought, and spat in the dirt. If he survived, he would speak with the Flower Knight. He did not care what Kim’s plan was, as long as it allowed him an opportunity to kill Mongols.

Tightening his grip on his knives, he approached the knight. As he closed, the knight fell into an easy stance, hatchet held ready in front of him, hammer raised behind his head. Lakshaman adjusted his step, circling to his right — just outside the reach of the knight’s hammer swing.

The knight shuffled, shifting to keep Lakshaman in front of him. He held himself with an easy confidence, assured in the superiority of his weapons and armor. His reach was longer; he had no reason to attack first. Lakshaman would have to get in closer to use his knives, and during that time, the knight would have a chance to use the hammer and hatchet.

Arrogance is good, Lakshaman thought. It will make him slow.

He continued to drift around the man, maintaining the same distance and letting the tips of his knives dance hypnotically. As if he was mentally assessing the knight’s armament, and trying – vainly — to ascertain a weak spot in the man’s maille. He stopped being aware of breathing, as his mind unconsciously focused on the subtle changes in the knight’s posture and position.

The sun beat down, and Lakshaman felt sweat bead up on his neck and drip down the inside of his arms within his leather bracers. The knight’s white coat would keep him somewhat cool, but his arms and head did not have the same protection. It had to be getting hot in that armor. How much patience did the knight have?

Having completed two complete circuits of the man’s stationary position, Lakshaman settled into a low stance, knives ready, and waited. How long?

The Westerner leaped forward, the hatchet lashing out at Lakshaman’s neck. It was a marvelously delivered blow, the weight of his opponent trailing behind the ax head as it whirled toward him. Waiting behind it was the hammer, held high in preparation to swing down and shatter bone. A less experienced fighter would have expected the hammer to come first, but Lakshaman had never doubted that the first strike would come from the hatchet. For all the swiftness of the knight’s attack, signs of his intent had been readily clear to Lakshaman. The hatchet was in his enemy’s left hand, and as it snapped toward him, Lakshaman stepped forward and to the outside. He slammed the pommel of one of his knives and his other forearm against the Westerner’s arm, blocking the blow before it could even be fully extended.

He was close enough now for the knives.

The knight reacted quickly, folding his arm back to make his elbow a blunt object. His momentum carried him forward, and his elbow hit Lakshaman hard at the base of his rib cage. With a concussive whuff, the less-armored man felt half his breath abandon his body. It was only an instinctive tightening of his abdomen that prevented him from being left gasping for breath.

He felt the hammer coming. If he stood still and looked for it, his upraised face would be a natural target the knight could not miss. He could not step back quickly enough to avoid the strike either. He had to stay in close.

Lakshaman had a choice to move right or left, behind or in front of the knight’s body. Moving in front meant that he was exposed to the man’s weapons, but it also meant his own could come into play. Moving behind the knight would put his own back to the man. As the hammer came hurtling down, Lakshaman darted to his left.

As he moved, his left hand came up, and his blade slashed across the gap between the base of the man’s helm and his neck, on the off chance that the armor was weaker there. Metal rang off metal with no sign of blood, and Lakshaman had no other opportunity to investigate his blow as the knight’s hatchet blade came whirling past his nose.

The only reason the hatchet missed was because the move was one that Lakshaman himself knew — the whirling arm-over-arm assault that seemed, to an untrained eye, to be an impossible tangle of limbs. That the Westerner knew it was a surprise to Lakshaman—even more so that he would attempt it with disparate weapons like the hammer and hatchet — and it was only pure instinct that had warned him to pull back. As it was, the blade of the hatchet passed less than a finger’s width in front of his face.

Lakshaman did not wait around to see if the knight was capable of continuing the whirlwind. The angle was bad, and his knives were not meant for stabbing, but he jabbed the one in his right hand up into the knight’s left armpit anyway. He put as much strength as he could in the attack, and the knight collapsed around his weapon, a muffled grunt of pain coming from inside his helmet.

The knight jerked backward, and the knife was torn out of Lakshaman’s grip. Instead of trying to retrieve it, Lakshaman grabbed for the shoulder of the man’s coat, getting a fistful of cloth and maille. The knight was off- balance. It would be easy to throw him now. Once the man was on the ground, the superiority of his weapons would be negated and it would be much easier to cut him.

Fire exploded across his back. The knight had managed to twist the hatchet and plant it into Lakshaman’s back. His legs and arms still worked, so the hatchet had missed his spine, but the strike had split his leathers. Snarling like a wounded beast, Lakshaman drove his right knee into his enemy’s groin, sending the man reeling. His back muscles shrieked in agony as the knight tried to hang on to the hatchet; finally, Lakshaman managed to twist away and pull the handle from his opponent’s fingers.

The crowd roared with delight as they separated, each now missing one of their weapons. Lakshaman’s knife lay in the dirt somewhere, and he tried to reach around and grasp the haft of the hatchet caught in his back. More pain lanced up his back and into the base of his skull as he twisted his body. His fingers slipped on the bloody handle.

The knight wobbled, his legs struggling to hold him upright. He grasped the lower edge of his helmet with one hand, adjusting it, and Lakshaman caught sight of a shadow at the base of his neck. His knife had cut the man after all. Not fatally, but he had drawn blood.

The crowd was on its feet, shouting and screaming a war cry of its own, as the knight gripped his hammer with both hands and charged. A bold attack. The man hadn’t learned caution from their first exchange.

His teeth bared in a feral grin, Lakshaman’s hand found the haft of the hatchet and pulled it free. Now he had a more suitable weapon.

The hammer swept down, and Lakshaman darted to his left, sweeping the bloody hatchet up to slam its handle against the shaft of the knight’s hammer. Even before the shock of the contact rippled all the way up to his shoulder, he was already turning his wrist, letting the momentum of the hammer carry it past him. He was inside the knight’s guard again.

The knight snapped his right hand out, and his metal-shod fist drove into Lakshaman’s throat. He’d taken worse, but the blow made his throat close. Gagging, he felt his grip on the hatchet loosen. The knight hit him again, and he barely managed to tuck his chin down. The knight’s fist scrapped across his jaw—once, twice.

Lakshaman stumbled back. The knight pressed his advantage, pounding Lakshaman with short jabs. They weren’t terribly powerful hits, but the flurry of punches kept him off balance, forcing him to retreat.

He saw his opening: his opponent was covered from head to foot with the tightly linked maille, but it did not cover the entirety of the palms. At the base of the hand there was a patch of exposed skin. As long as the knight held a weapon, it wasn’t vulnerable, but without one …

As the knight punched him again, Lakshaman jabbed upward with the knife in his left hand. He shoved the point into the base of the man’s hand with all of his strength, and the knight’s fist cocked at a strange angle. He felt the knife grind against bone, and he shoved and twisted the blade.

The knight screamed, and Lakshaman caught a flash of the whites of the man’s eyes through the narrow slit of the helmet.

Letting go of both his knife and the nearly forgotten hatchet, Lakshaman grappled with his enemy. He looped his left arm around the knight’s right, pinning the man’s elbow against his side. The knight, moaning and spitting, threw his weight against Lakshaman in a desperate attempt to overwhelm the lesser-armored man and regain control of the grapple. Lakshaman dropped his hips — the one whose hips are lower is the one who wins — and twisted his body around as he swept his right leg back.

The knight tried to stop the throw, but he was too off balance, and his armor gave him too much mass. He flew off his feet, and Lakshaman, still holding onto his arm, came tumbling with him. They crashed to the ground, and there was a bone-snapping crunch as his elbow twisted too far in the wrong direction.

Lakshaman rolled off his opponent, the roar of the crowd filling his head. Crouching, he warily regarded his downed opponent while his right hand tried to explore the painful gash in his back. His hand came away red with blood, but he could still move. He could still fight.

Unlike his opponent.

The knight was struggling to turn over, but his brain hadn’t quite realized how useless his right arm was. The hand had been punctured by Lakshaman’s knife, and the elbow was bent at a hideous angle. The maille sleeve was already dark with blood. If he was spared the ignominy of death in the arena, he would be maimed for the rest of his life.

Lakshaman was reminded of something he had seen as a boy, an odd memory of a time before he had become a fighter. One spring morning, he had stumbled upon a butterfly as it struggled to emerge from its chrysalis. He had watched it wriggle out of its sheath and tumble to the ground. Its wings never opened properly, and the fall had caused its crumpled wings to harden stiff in a wrinkled mass that would never carry it aloft. He remembered crouching over it, staring intently at this tiny creature whose life was over a scant minute after it had been born.

The knight flopped onto his back, clawing at his helmet with his good hand. He was screaming and crying inside the metal cap; he couldn’t get a good look at what was wrong with his arm. He knew something was wrong, but the pain had to be so intense that his martial resolve had been swept away. He was like the butterfly, lying on the ground, struggling to fly but unable to understand why it couldn’t.

Lakshaman retrieved his other knife from the sand and knelt beside the downed knight. With a grunt, he shoved his blade through the eye slit of the man’s helmet. The man thrashed for a moment and then his limbs stilled.